XPath

• The XML Path Language is a way to refer to an element in an XML tree.
• All XPath expressions are evaluated in relation to some context node in the tree.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<contacts>
  <contact name="Able Baker"><email>able@example.com</email></contact>
  <contact name="Careful Dodger"><email>dodger@example.com</email></contact>
  <contact name="Eager Framer" personal="true"><email>framer@example.com</email></contact>
</contacts>

Let context = contacts:

• contact set of all <contact> tags.
• contact[1] first <contact> tag.
• contact[last()] last <contact> tag.
• contact/email all <email> children of <contact>
• contact/@name value of name attribute of contact children
• contact[@personal="true"] all <contact> tags with attribute personal = "true"